It’s been such a busy few weeks that I haven’t had much time to myself, let alone much time to write anything for the blog. The week before last, we held the Social History Society Conference in Lancaster. As administrator, I didn’t make it to any of the papers (I was too busy running around sorting things out), but it seemed to be pretty successful. We had two and a half days of papers, both in person and online; a roundtable on Education, Opportunity and Training; several exhibitors; lots of lovely food; and music from a local jazz band, Luca Brasi. Our keynote, which I did hear, was from Amanda Vickery. She talked about beauty pageants in Morecambe, and how they grew out of earlier club day and field day queen traditions in the north. Given that I was chief maid to my church’s rose queen, I was carnival queen a couple of years later, and even (I hesitate to admit this – it’s something I had completley forgotten about until the keynote) took part in a beauty pageant though I can’t remember the precise circumstances, it was a really interesting talk!

The previous week, we had a small celebration at work with our third years, to mark the end of their degrees. I’m really pleased to say that one of my dissertation students came up to thank me for the feedback I gave on his work, and that one of my ‘Fake News or Fact?’ students won the prize for the best grade in an early modern special subject! So that was a nice afternoon, and I followed it with a family trip to see Minions: The Rise of Gru!

This week has been no less interesting. I’ve taken over as chair of the editorial board of The Historian, the members’ journal of the Historical Association, and chaired my first meeting – so that’s nice. I’m currently in the process of editing the autumn edition on Women and Power, so I’ve done quite a bit of work on that this week.

Then on Thursday, I bought Idris. Long time readers of the blog might remember Dave the chameleon, whom we lost some years ago. It’s taken me a long time to get over Dave, but this week I finally decided to replace him. Idris is only a baby, and he’s very different colours to Dave, but he’s very lovely!

I’ve been taking it relatively easy this week, because the week of the conference was so tough, so I ended the week with an extended family trip to Martin Mere for a barn owl and bat walk. If I’m honest, I’ve had better views of barn owls just down the road at Cow Hill, but it was a really lovely evening.